Calgarians have fallen out with their mayor. Jyoti Gondek believes they just don't know her yet

Mayor Jyoti Gondek has homed in on one political problem as she struggles with poor approval ratings that could doom her hopes for re-election as mayor:

Calgarians don't really know who she is.

She acknowledges other challenges — mostly to do with the current political environment, while those who've worked with her previously cite issues with Gondek's leadership.

But remaining an unknown quantity is quite a dynamic to recognize, and try to overcome, after three years (or 75 per cent) of Gondek's first term, and as she quietly explores whether to bid for another term against a growing field of challengers.

It's an anomaly in two ways.

Not only has every Calgary mayor since the early 1980s won a second term by comfortably massive margins, but each of those re-election bids were in that third year on the job. Councils didn't enjoy four-year terms until midway through last decade and the tenure of Naheed Nenshi, Gondek's predecessor.

So despite the fact this current mayor has an unprecedented amount of time to make residents acquainted with her, Gondek feels she's got work to do. She leads one of Canada's largest cities, and beamed into Calgarians' homes and social-media feeds almost daily during the water main crisis, and yet.

"I think it just takes time to get to know a person," she told CBC News in an interview last week.

Getting to know you

She debuted a city-funded website mayorgondek.ca a few weeks ago, and she's making a point of attending more community events.

In mid-October, Gondek launched a panel discussion series called Calgary Talks, invite-only in person but available to all on her YouTube channel.

After a week, that video had 97 online views.

Although she hasn't said yet whether she'll run again for mayor, Gondek has been sussing out how much organizational and financial support she'd have if she ran, including a recent event she hosted with past donors.

And to her, awareness levels are another key factor in her decision. 

"I'm very interested in making sure that if I choose to enter the race, that Calgarians understand clearly who I am, what I stand for, what my vision is, and what I commit to them in terms of public service," Gondek said.

Does she suffer from low support because not enough people are tuning in, or because people are tuning her out? Have residents not learned enough about her yet, or have they learned enough to make up their minds? 

From all sides

She self-identifies as centrist, but has given conservative Calgarians much to oppose, from declaring a climate emergency to property tax increases to the blanket rezoning to allow row houses in all residential districts. She's irked local progressives for pledging $515 million for the Flames arena — more city money than in the previous deal.

The arena deal is where Gondek "got eaten alive," said Coun. Courtney Walcott.

"Any time she did something for the other side of the aisle, she lost her base," said Walcott, often a council ally to the mayor. 

"When she votes yes for the event centre, people don't even care that she did the housing strategy."

Gondek weathered the first recall campaign against a Calgary mayor this spring; the 69,344 signatures were far shy of the 514,284 required to trigger a snap plebiscite on her job. Even so, months of headlines about recall petitioners "shakes people's confidence" in her, the mayor said.

The toxic, social media-fuelled partisan environment swirling around much of modern politics has made it difficult for her, Walcott said — she too often gets tied to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, a politician reviled by many in Calgary.

"When a centrist like Jyoti is called a socialist and a commie, it's hard thing," said Walcott, one of council's more progressive members.

Frustration appeared to cross ideological lines with Gondek's refusal to attend last year's Hanukkah menorah lighting, as well as during the water restrictions caused by the feeder main breakage and repairs.

When that critical water pipe burst, Gondek became messenger, explainer and water conservation pleader-in-chief.

It was reminiscent of the leadership spotlight Nenshi took 11 years ago during the flood, but he managed to get a popularity boost for a crisis-time performance; she couldn't turn requests for personal sacrifice and defence of past infrastructure maintenance decisions into something that improved her political fortunes.

Although Gondek reasons that she doesn't communicate enough, political consultant Sarah Biggs says the mayor simply isn't skilled at that key political craft.

Politics is 85 per cent messaging, said Biggs, who was a senior organizer for Gondek's mayoral campaign in 2021, but confirmed she wouldn't support her candidacy for 2025.

"If your messaging's not on point, it doesn't matter how good the outcome is," she said. "It's not going to work."

Mayor's counsel

Biggs worked on Gondek's mayoral victory with Stephen Carter, the image-making political strategist who advised Nenshi's first campaign and helped make Alison Redford Alberta's first woman premier in 2011. They helped turn a little-known rookie councillor with a PhD in urban sociology into a savvy, pragmatic progressive who lobbed criticisms at then-premier Jason Kenney.

She crushed the field of contenders with 45 per cent of the vote, earning the most votes in all 14 city wards. She named Carter her chief of staff, but let him go within a few months after multiple behavioural complaints against him.

Gondek's top aide since then, Amie Blanchette, comes with a policy and administrative background, not a political one. After Carter, the mayor's lack of experienced political advisors in her office has hurt her, Biggs said.

And she lacks her own strong political radar to navigate through choppy waters, her former organizer said.

"If her political instincts were so strong, people wouldn't be running with pitchforks after her," Biggs said.

Gondek started her mayoralty during the deadly fourth wave of COVID, a divisive and fraught time of mask and vaccine mandates. She reasons that she never got a honeymoon period, not even being allowed to have many supporters on hand for her election-night victory speech.

Walcott agrees. 

"We started arguably in the worst political moment you could have anywhere," he said.

As for her staff's political chops, the mayor said she prioritizes aides who can skilfully manage relationships with businesses, council offices and other government levels.

"There's something to be said for having [staff with] political acumen if you're actively campaigning," she told CBC News. "That's a different situation."

Carter, who is advising mayoral candidate Brian Thiessen and the new Calgary Party, said Gondek has struggled integrating herself into the mayoral realm and selling her policies to the public.

"When you look at the brand construction of Jyoti Gondek, [it] was apparently a fiction because she never lived it afterwards," Carter said.

Shiv Ruparell, who still considers himself a friend to Gondek, was briefly her deputy campaign manager in 2021. He was drawn to her side by Gondek's intelligence and ideas.

"Jyoti is not the kind of leader who's thinking about the next election," he said.

"If she made a big impact and was only there for one term, I think she would still be proud of her work."

And how's that gone for her, governing without concern for her political fortunes?

One in five

A Maru Public Opinion poll released last month suggested only 18 per cent of Calgarians said Gondek deserved re-election, while 69 per cent said she didn't. While Gondek reasons people don't know her well enough, a mere 13 per cent of the 400 Calgarians surveyed said they didn't know if she warranted four more years as mayor.

That poll was taken after the water main break, for which Gondek and others took heat. But even before that, her support levels were in the pits. A Leger poll in May showed that 12 per cent of respondents said they'd vote for Gondek in the next election; 56 per cent said "someone else" and 23 per cent were unsure.

And a ThinkHQ survey conducted in June measured the mayor's approval rating at 26 per cent, lower than at any earlier point in Gondek's tenure, or any of Nenshi's.

The whole council is facing poor approval ratings in surveys, and most other councillors aren't yet saying if they want to run again in a tough environment, either.

"We are asking each other those things because we have seen the toll it has taken on our families, on our mental health, on our physical health, our teams, and we are all reflecting on the hurdles we have been navigating," said Coun. Kourtney Penner. 

"To what end do we encourage or discourage each other to enter another four years of difficult times?"

For Nenshi, and other past mayors, strong support and incumbent's advantage have scared off serious challengers from running against a rookie mayor seeking a second term.

Not so for Gondek, with former councillor Jeff Davison and former police commission chair Brian Thiessen already declaring their mayoral bids, and two sitting councillors also stating they may run.

Gondek won't tip her hand as to whether she's running, but she does seem to be at least testing the waters.

On Oct. 16, Gondek hosted a few dozen past donors and campaign supporters for a mix-and-mingle at a 17th Avenue S.W. restaurant, CBC News has learned. 

"I think a lot of people were there expecting an announcement, of course — and did not get one," said one attendee, who spoke on the condition they not be named. 

Her message to the crowd, the source summarized, was: "I'm here. I haven't gone away. I'm not going away. I'm going to continue to do my job as long as I sit in this chair and I'm excited about the future of Calgary."

She'll need support from those donors again to mount a credible bid against her rivals. And thanks to new rules imposed by the provincial government, money may be harder to extract from the real estate developers, lawyers and other business figures who attended her event.

In past elections, big-money donors were allowed to give a maximum of $5,000 to as many candidates as they liked, letting wealthy individuals or interested executives hedge their bets.

This election, an individual — or company — can only donate $5,000 in total. That means they'll have to be choosy who they spend their money on.

Gondek insisted her event had nothing to do with campaigning, and that she isn't fundraising yet.

"It was clearly a message to people that I know well that I'm in the game and I'm focused on our future and I'm here doing the work," she said.

The only councillor to serve alongside the last three mayors, Andre Chabot said Dave Bronconnier was direct and focused on his agenda, while Nenshi was a good speaker and personable enough to win people over. "This mayor is neither of those," he added, describing her as more abrupt than open and friendly. 

He recalls watching Nenshi at events, and how others would flock around him.

"Gondek has to seek people out to have people next to her," Chabot said in an interview. "They don't naturally gravitate to her."

Who is Jyoti Gondek?

Pollster Janet Brown recalled being at public gatherings where Gondek showed up. 

"I've witnessed where a lot of people weren't even recognizing the fact that she was in attendance," she said.

Gondek's more unassuming, subdued and promotion-adverse nature may have denied her an opportunity to seize the spotlight and win trust when she spoke during the water main crisis, according to Brown.

Aside from the vocally opposed and more quietly supporting, many Calgarians are in "the group who still doesn't quite feel they have a handle on who she is," the pollster said.

That lines up with what Gondek herself believes is a political liability: that she's not yet understood. If she runs again, her success may depend on whether there is a massive bloc of Calgarians who are open-minded and genuinely willing to let Gondek reintroduce herself to them, and if this time she can deliver that positive message.

After all, Brown said, a politician can more easily win over people who are uncertain than the ones who've already decided they're uninterested.